New School faculty members erected their own solidarity encampment at the university’s Manhattan campus Wednesday afternoon in the first staff-led anti-Israel protest in the US, according to organizers.
A handful of faculty members set up roughly half a dozen tents at the progressive college’s University Center and joined their students in demanding the school divest from 13 companies they claim are aiding Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.
They’re also demanding an end to NYPD’s presence on campus, calling for disciplinary charges against students to be expunged.
”The movement started by our brave students must continue, and it is incumbent upon us as faculty to heed their calls, and help finish what they started,” an anonymous representative who is organizing the new encampment said in a statement released by New School’s Students for Justice in Palestine.
The Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment, named after a prominent writer and professor who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December, comes after more than 40 New School students were arrested when the NYPD cleared out their anti-Israel encampment on Friday night, according the New School Free Press.
Dozens more students were issued suspensions by the school, according to the student paper.
“From the brazen lies spouted by administration in the face of violent NYPD repression to the suspension of students and tactics used to prevent students from accessing their essential needs after arrests, it is clear the President, Board members and Administration have no interest in protecting students or listening to their demands, only in protecting themselves and their own profits,” another unnamed faculty member said.
The Post has reached out to The New School for comment.
University Interim President Donna Shalala “has asserted a false and misleading narrative to justify the deployment of NYPD riot police against her students as they slept,” the Students for Justice in Palestine alleged in a statement on Tuesday as they called for a “general strike” to shut down school operations.
The strike calls for all students, faculty and staff to refrain from participating in any labor for the New School — paid or unpaid. Faculty have been urged to refuse to submit final grades, according to the organization.
Following the mass arrest of students, over 94% of the hundreds of New School faculty members voted in favor of passing a vote of no confidence in Shalala and the Board of Trustees.
The faculty protesters also demand that universities and municipalities across the country drop charges and disciplinary actions against the more than 2,000 student protesters that have been arrested or disciplined by their colleges.
“This is the first faculty-led encampment in the US,” they said.
“We hope it will not be the last. We thank our students for showing us the way; for being our teachers.”